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Firefox, the nifty, web browser-developed by an open community of developers in public view, has finally toppled Microsoft Internet Explorer from its perch atop the list of favorite browsers.

StatsCounter reported that Firefox 3.5 is now the supreme browser. It dethroned Internet Explorer 7 as the most favored browser globally.

To be honest, this only means that the most popular version of the Firefox browsers beat the most popular version of Internet Explorer . Combined with the user bases of versions 6 and 8, Internet Explorer still is the most often used of all browsers with a share of 56%. But here, too, there's little to gloat about for Internet Explorer. It had a more commanding 65% share in the beginning of the year.

This is a small milestone in the browser wars that has been waging since the 1990s. For over a decade, Internet Explorer dominated the browser segment, and this was the first instance that it was bested in any way.

The general downward trend is worrisome for Microsoft, since a slew of bad news gnawed at the grand success of its launch of the Windows 7 operating system. In a recent report, iPhone users had surpassed Windows Mobile users in the U.S. market for the first time. A recent crash of the Microsoft cloud-based computing, which brought down T-Mobile's Sidekick, ,too, has shown that Microsoft is struggling to catch up with latest trends. But we can't write off the Goliath yet. Windows 7 has had tremendous success, and we should see the company taking steps to correct itself in the Internet/smartphone segment.